Mr. Speaker, I have serious concerns about this agreement, and I know I speak for many Northerners as I describe these concerns to you. But before I do, I want to acknowledge and thank the Premier and his staff who have worked so hard, and in many cases joyfully, to develop this agreement.

This deal provides too little money to take over a regime that is already inadequate and underfunded. The annual funding transfer to run these programs falls $20 million short, even of the estimates that we developed in looking at devolution a decade ago. We walked away from that deal in part because the money was not good enough.

There are many specific concerns that are bothersome. We will be enacting mirror legislation that perpetuates the weakened federal legislation that underpins the current management regime. We are getting the authority, but not quite, because we are forced to continue with the federal law we’ve already found so frustrating.

There’s Norman Wells. There’s the detailed schedules appended to the agreement that have remained unknown until last night and thus are not reviewed. The intergovernmental council is opaque. Concerns remain about the liabilities of contaminated sites devolved to GNWT or those that will develop as a result of limp federal review given the forced time frames and decimated budgets that they must deal with.

We don’t know how much the deal will actually set us back. For example, we took firm action to require security for remediation and abandonment costs of development on Commissioner’s lands. The new federal regime fails to demand this security, lowering the high standards we’ve learned are essential to responsible management in the public interest.

Our resource royalty regime is no better than it’s ever been, and despite several objective reviews by different parties, including some by the federal government, all concluding our royalty rates are set too low. And despite imminent devolution, there appears to be no intent of this government to protect the public interest as our most valued resources are extracted and shipped off. Consider, for example, that as the federal Minister of AANDC admitted only Monday in Ottawa, the total revenues paid to Canada throughout the life of Giant Mine were $4 million, a royalty rate similar to what is collected today from diamond mining.

The devolution deal is unsettling because of key authorities retained and actions being taken by our higher level negotiating partner, the Government of Canada. All we get out of this deal is the ability to permit development that the feds have brought forward through their inadequate review processes, when reviews happen at all. The federal government has held back the truly potent powers to decide what projects proceed to environmental review, and to review and recommend controls and safeguards through the environmental review process. We are left with the consequences.

Many believe this deal, and the way it’s being done through a naive partner, reveals an orchestrated resource grab. While the federal government makes it ever easier to access and extract our resources ever more quickly, and retains power over project environmental reviews, we are seeing communities and government left cleaning up messes and people suffering ever greater disparities of income and opportunity.

Combined with the GNWT’s open for business and worry about conservation later approach, a soaring cost of living, and a megaproject focus that benefits the few, the drain of Northerners will continue and even escalate, replaced with yet more commuting workers from afar. This, of course, would be in line with the strategy of the federal government and, certainly, the extractive industries that clearly have its ear, because as a consequence, it would be ever easier to ignore the public interest in favour of increasing reliance on raw resource extraction. Our current GNWT Cabinet seems disturbingly aligned with this federal government, heightening the worries that many feel.

Should these concerns be realized, we would see a continuation of the regime that has left us historically disgusted with the federal management of resources that has prompted many to already quit and leave. For those of us who are Aboriginal and/or long-term residents, here until death do us part, the lack of power to control the front end of managing development means many residents will continue to suffer from the negative social and environmental costs the federal regime has permitted and even promoted.

I am concerned about the hype and focus on the bucks we will get. To put things in perspective, all of GNWT’s hypothetical resource revenues this year would have gone up in smoke with this year’s commitment to the Inuvik-Tuk highway alone. And while we are getting more dollars, the federal government is cutting funding to our Aboriginal government partners.

Perhaps the saddest thing of all on this deal is our failure to meet citizen interest in being meaningfully informed and involved. Clearly, it is a different perspective, I know, than the Premier has.

While our Premier and this Assembly could easily have chosen to take this to the people for a direct participation, we chose the paternalistic way, typical of colonizing governments. Hey, people, we have the authority. We can make decisions without asking you a darn thing. As I said, sad.

I remain amazed that this government passed up this golden opportunity to hear the voice of our people and add the stamp of widespread support such a vote surely would have returned. When all is said and done, we still have the potential to learn from this divisive exercise so artfully staged by the federal government and wilfully rendered by ourselves. We do gain significant power, most immediately the opportunity to strive inclusively to gain the trust of those whose trust we have lost, to mend the division this process has cost and ultimately the opportunity to customize legislation to make it our own and eventually to get back to the table to finally devolve the environmental management regime on which responsible decisions can and must be made, decisions by the people who occupy the land.

To quote one of my constituents, Ms. Lois Little, “The path the NWT is on should be clear to everyone. There should be no divisiveness among us.” We should indeed be masters in our own houses, as we have heard before today. Like Ms. Little, I do not believe we are there yet, but I am going to take a leap of trust and believe that we now recognize this as our goal, that we have learned a lot about how to and how not to get there, and that the insides of this Trojan horse – thanks, Mike – are more benign than some fear to be the case.

Yes, I will be voting in support of the motion for this increment of devolution. Yes, I support this historic next step towards home rule for the people of the Northwest Territories. Yes, I agree that for too long our citizens have been held at the whim of the distant, insensitive and often disinterested federal stewardship of our most important prerogatives. We have been under the control of a resource management regime that fails to meet our needs, fails to deliver maximum benefits to our people and, most importantly, fails to sensibly safeguard the social and environmental values we hold dear.

I will be voting in favour of the motion, but as must be utterly clear by now, my support is definitely a qualified yes. I, and I know my colleagues too, will be working hard, either within or outside this House, to try and ensure that this is a good decision, for it is how we go forward that is now critical, completing our family. Let’s overcome the divide and conquer strategy we have pursued and meet the needs to get the Akaitcho and the Dehcho on board.

Implementation: Let’s recognize that energy is fundamental to our cost of living, and pull it out of the empire of the Department of Energy, Minerals

and Petroleum Development and give it the stance it needs to serve the people.

Evaluation: What course correction assurances will we have in place?

Reporting: How will we strive to be transparent, openly consultative and accountable?

I hope this government has learned that how we do things is almost as important as what we do. Devolution, in principle, can be good. I am taking the high road. Mahsi.